The Nose Knows
St. Armands in Sarasota.
The Circle Book Store – the only independent book store in the area.
I stopped in with Max and Karen, looked at the YA section – searched for Michael Grant’s Gone (it’s next on my list) and finally, when the register was clear, wandered over to say hello to the bookseller in charge.
I had brought a copy of my book and surreptitiously signed it. I was ready.
I chatted a bit about the book, gave her my pitch and all the usual accompanying information about availability at Ingrams and Baker & Taylor. She smiled at me and seemed interested then said, “It sounds good. I think I’ll read it first myself.”
My job was done.
I walked over to where Karen was looking at a book and gave her the thumbs up. She stopped for a second and looked at me. She stared at my face.
“What?” I said, leaning in close.
“What’s that big pen mark down the middle of your nose?”
“What pen mark?”
“You had that on when you talked to her, didn’t you?” she asked.
I nodded and wiped the mark off. “It’s off now?”
“Yes.”
And so it goes…
Prussian Gulf or Sarasota Maul
We’re on vacation at a friend’s family condo in Sarasota, Florida – two families, one of my son’s friends. The two boys are laughing and giggling all the time (except when they are mad at each other which is not often). If I open the window I can hear the waves breaking on the beach. The balcony overlooks the Gulf of Mexico. I love the Gulf of Mexico. I don’t know why. The waves are small but the water is a different color than I’m used to. Long Island water is dark and cloudy and cold cold cold. The water here is lighter in color, turquoise, and chilly but swimable. It is beautiful.
I’ve slept until almost nine two mornings in a row. Normally I am up at 5:30am. The dogs are back home being boarded for the week playing with other dogs and wondering if we’ll come back for them (well one isn’t wondering – he’s probably too busy playing, but the younger one probably is). I miss those mongrels but I’m also glad I can sleep late.
It’s 70′s with a breeze and the sun just came out. It might have hit 81 but I’m not sure. I’m not wearing my watch.
This is my vacation. I’ve had a cold since the day before we left but it’s getting better. The sea air is doing it. That and some sleep.
I’ve been exhausted from my day job.
I’ve written two for two days of vacation – continuing my streak of three months. It is lovely writing from the balcony, listening to the ocean. We’re going to Disney one day, but only one day. Every other day is the pool, the beach, or the pool (there are two).
Here’s three words I wrote today:
- maul
- center
- Prussian
Guest Post at Gotteenfiction
I’ve got the writing prompt at Got Teen Fiction today so go take a look at my post and let me know what you think. Try out the writing challenge too.
Tars Tarkas Jeddack of Thark and Savasana
I’ve been in a cave this week – a cave of work, of budgets, of elearning systems, of gamefication explanations and analysis, of wireframes, and harm reduction, of SBIRs NIDAs SSICs and NDRIs. Some days I live in a sea of acronyms and abbreviations. Other days the hull of my ship is made of tinsel. I am tired and not about to catch up on sleep any time soon.
Lying in savasana each day for a few minutes at the end of my yoga practice helps me to settle into myself and rest.
It has been one of those kinds of weeks. But tomorrow is Friday and new movies come out on Friday and even though I don’t go to movies much anymore (I love them but don’t have time for them) Friday has always been a joyous day for me because I can look at the reviews of movies and dream about what I would like to see. That and of course it’s the weekend.
John Carter of Mars comes out in less than a month. I have waited for this movie for almost forty years, since I read the ERB book and was first transported to Mars as a boy. I hope it will be good. I’m taking my son to see it with me.
Three words I found today in my work:
Posh
Ripping
Blighty
What words have you found in your imagination?
The Keys to the Intercom
Writers create worlds out of words. It sounds obvious but it isn’t. I didn’t realize the amount of world building that went into a historical novel until I wrote one. If you’d have asked me before I wrote Open Wounds whether I’d ever write a historical novel I’d have told you, you were out of your mind.
I just finished Garth Nix’s Mr. Monday: The Keys to the Kingdom Book 1. My son read it and told me I had to read it too… so I did. And he was right. It’s a good book. What impressed me the most about the book is the world building Nix did. He created a world in which a line of script is alive and letters changed can change life to death and visa versa. Nix’s world has its own logic to it. It makes sense out of Nothing, and Nithlings out of Nothing and Fetchers out of Nothing. It is a book that makes me see a world that I’ve never seen before – one that springs out of Nothing.
World building is not relegated only to Fantasy or Science Fiction, but also historical novels and realistic fiction. Even realistic fiction has to create a believable here and now just as historical fiction has to create a believable then and there.
I’ll give you an example. In the 1930′s-40′s the subways in New York City didn’t have intercom systems in the cars. You knew what stop you were at by the conductor shouting it out from his window and from looking out the window or door yourself. I’m betting on crowded days people missed a lot of stops. It’s a simple detail but it gives time and place and helps to build the world that Cid Wymann lives in.
When world building you create worlds out of words that readers take and surround with atmosphere, beating hearts, and long harsh howls.
Symbiotic Stew
I travelled to Phili on Monday.
I took the day off from my job to teach a 1hr distance learning writing workshop to 9th, 10th, 11th, and 12th graders at three Pennsylvania High Schools. There were about 40 kids in attendance at the three sites. I taught from the UPENN distance learning center, called MAGPI and it was a very cool thing to do. Each school shows up on a huge TV screen as a small 1 foot by 2 foot rectangle. I teach from the MAGPI studio – a small ten by ten space with three cameras, my laptop and Powerpoint, some notes, and a copy of my book to read from. The MAGPI folks don’t pay me for teaching and I cover my own traveling expenses,but I get to teach classes on writing to young writers and that makes it worth every penny.
Today I talked about first lines of novels and how they start the relationship between reader and writer. I’m into this relationship idea. Readers read and interpret and writers direct the interpretation through the words they write. I know this sounds very basic – like I should have gotten this before -but I didn’t. I just had it in my head that writers wrote and readers read – separate from each other. We’re not. We depend on each other, need each other. We’re symbiotes in a way.
The kids were great and I enjoyed speaking with them. They came up with first sentences for their own to-be-written novels that were terrific. I hope to see one in book form one day. It’s the second time I’ve done a workshop with the MAGPI folks and they’ve invited me back for a third workshop in the spring.
On my way home I stopped at a nearby public library and met Dan, their YA specialist. I gave him a copy of my book for the library. He had a big smile on his face when I gave it to him.
I love libraries.
Words from W. Goldman
I’ve got inspiration on Gotteenfiction.blogspot.com. Go check it out. There are also still two writing contests open (yesterdays scrabbliscious and last Mondays prompt with Raife), a raffle for five books by the blog’s writers, and a copy of Cheryl Rainfield’s Scars.
Conspiracies, Obsessions, and Crossing Boundaries
It’s coming.
My first book festival in which I’ll be on a panel discussing a subject that has to do with my book.
I’m very excited about this. So far I’ve been to a few (3) conferences (ALA, BEA, and a NYC Dept. of Ed Librarians Conference) and each of them I’ve signed and done some author speed dating but no presenting on panels.
It seems like a cool thing that an author would do. I’m excited about it.
The Virginia Festival of the Book invited me (thanks to my great publicist JKSCommunications!) and as a Yankee, it’s a real honor to have been picked. Maybe the road trip last summer down south paid off. Whatever Goddesses were looking out for me I’m one happy camper.
I’ll be on two panels.
Panel 1: Conspiracies and Obsessions – novels of unravelling lives – with Alma Katsu, Virginia Moran, and Amelia Gray (and me). It’s an adult author line-up, not YA. I’ll have to think about the context but it sounds like a good fit for Cid Wymann and Open Wounds.
Panel 2: Crossing Boundaries – novels about family drama, love, and loss beyond borders – with N.M.Kelby, Jacqueline E. Luckett, and Elizabeth Nunez (and me). I can’t forget me. Also adult novels but I think I’ll fit in with Open Wounds just fine.
The festival is on March 21-25 and I’ll be on panel 1 on Thursday the 23 and panel 2 Friday the 24. If you’re in Charlottesille VA around then… come say hello. I’ll be the author with the big smile on his phiz.
And here’s the real kicker. The panels will be at a Barnes and Noble. They won’t carry my book normally in store (although they do sell it online) but I’m betting they carry it for the festival. Oh yeah. Uh huh. Oh yeah. I’m still stopping at indi New Dominion Bookstore - oldest in VA. That’s going to be even cooler. Maybe I can convince them to carry my book…
Here’s the link: Virginia Festival of Books
A Guinness Walks Into a Partagás Smoking a Bar…
Writing is painting pictures with words.
That’s all we get.
Words.
No facial expressions, no visual cues, no body language, nothing… unless you write it in. Otherwise you leave it to the reader’s imagination to fill in the blanks. That’s the way it works. Some writer’s are sparse in description and some are heavy. Some like to control what the reader sees and some like to leave some space for them to see on their own. The writer directs. The reader follows. If the reader doesn’t follow the book gets put down.
It’s an amazing process of collaboration led by the writer. I don’t think I ever realized this before – how collaborative the act is.
Worlds can be brought to life with just the right details. Civilizations can be raised up from the dust or from beneath the ocean’s floor. Think of the images you just pulled up to see those civilizations in your mind’s eye. Each of your images is different depending on your own life experience and how that influences what you see based on the words I chose. Our experience of words is part subjective, colored by our life experience. Now that is cool, if you think about it for just a moment. That’s also why, when a book is made into a movie some people say it is exactly as they saw it from reading the book and others say that it’s not like what they read at all – even though they read the exact same book.
How do you know when you have found truth in painting your picture with words? How do you, as the writer, know you have chosen words that show something authentic, that you have directed effectively enough to tell a good story?
I edited a script for an e-learning system today and was faced very quickly with an example of how this works. Dialog for a character ran like this:
I acknowledge that there are challenges in conducting service placement.
I read the sentence out loud to the writer and saw a look of understanding come over her face as soon as I said the word acknowledge.
“It doesn’t sound right,” she said, shaking her head.
“Then let’s make it sound right for the character,” I replied.
She wrote: I know as a provider that there are going to be challenges in doing my job.
She changed it to sound right – to sound authentic to her. Writing scripts I tell my staff to read them out loud. “You’ll hear authenticity in dialog,” I say. I find it works the same way with narrative.
A full read through of my manuscript, out loud, to myself, is the final step in my revision process. That is my final check on directorial authenticity. It takes me a day or two with breaks for coffee or English Breakfast tea, sometimes toothpicks for my eyes (not in them) and a bunch of pee breaks. My butt is usually sore by the end, as is my throat.
But when I finish – if it’s really finished – if the words paint a picture that is authentic to me – then it’s time for a Guinness and a Partagás underneath a pale sliver of moon.
Of Cyclops and Men
Three words I typed today:
Bowlers
Polyphemus
Knuckles
I laid out a puzzle for myself to solve and solved it in my narrative. A small section but a pivotal one. Funny how plot points come and go.
You Got Milk and I Got Teen Fiction
Raife pulls a knife...
Got Teen Fiction blog starts today.
I wrote the first post.
It is supposed to be edgy. You can tell me if it is or is not. I will tell you that my colleagues helped me to edit it. We took out words like sodomy and BOP-POCL (BUREAU OF PERNICIOUS POWER OVER CHILDREN’S LITERATURE), but we left in shit.
It’s the first post and my colleagues were a little nervous about those words - except shit which we left in, like I said, but they were still nervous about it. Shit makes people nervous. So does the word sodomy. It was in reference to the last 14 states taking their sodomy laws off their books in 2003. Now at least you have context.
- Today a writing prompt for a 100 word piece which, if chosen, will be published in two Fridays. Anyone can submit – teens, adults, anyone.
- Wednesday is quote day and
- Friday is an interview with Cheryl Rainfield (of Scars and Hunted fame).
Joemamma and Leafing
Open Wounds was selected by two review sites as best book of 2011. This is cool.
With small distribution to bookstores and mostly online sales the fact that my book has reached so many people (enough to get a second printing and hopefully, soon, a third) is a testament to my publicist JKS Communications (Julie Schoerke, Marissa, and Samantha) and all the review sites they were able to get copies of my book to. Evelyn Fazio at WestSide also had a lot of faith in my book right from the start and gave it as much of a push as she could.
Joemamma’s review from Life Happens While Books are Waiting was one of the first bloggers out there who reviewed my book and I had the wonderful opportunity to meet her, her daughter Jennifer, and her granddaughter Victoria for lunch when I was in Denver last spring. I had the best time talking shop with the three of them and it really set the marker for me in meeting reviewers and getting to know the review side of the marketing puzzle. They are book-lovers and good people. Getting listed on her site as best book she read in 2011 is an honor.
Megan’s review site is Leafing Through Life and I met her at BEA last year. Her review of Open Wounds just came online. It’s funny because she was hesitant about picking my book up to read and once read says it’s the best book she’s read in 2011. There is nothing quite like finding treasure buried beneath an unsuspecting cover. Check out her review using the link.
Not a bad way to start out 2012.
Three Chicks and a Guy
“Got Teen Fiction?” coming on the 23rd – a joint blog endeavor with three other YA authors (Karen DelleCava, Shari Berger Maurer & Selene Bayrack- Castrovilla.). Okay… I’ll tell you the truth, the first name for this joint blog that was put on the table was Three Chicks and a Guy. Okay it might have been three chicks and Joe. In either case, I couldn’t deal with the stress so we went with Got Teen Fiction. Much better.
We all write realistic fiction (so far but who knows?) and all three of my colleagues are terrific writers so if you havne’t checked out their sites take a look to see what they’ve written. Key in any teens (teachers) you know for our contests. Every week we’ll have a short writing contest with the winner(s) getting published on the blog and getting a prize. The first contest will have a good one!
Writing is the subject. Teen fiction is the genre. January 23rd is the launch.
Book mark now: Gotteenfiction.blogspot.com
Brain Droppings of Patanjali
I relate a lot of things to the Yoga Sutras. I teach yoga so in some ways that makes sense. It’s also one of the few philosophical texts that I’ve read multiple times. I find it a fascinating exploration of the human mind and the journey within. I also think it has lessons for the real world today – even if it is over 3000 years old in written form and who knows how many in verbal. Because I find writing such a challenging and inward looking activity I can’t help but connect the two. Besides I’m practical. If you can’t take a practice, like yoga, and apply it to the real world then what good is it?
More than 3000 years ago, people were exploring the journey inward toward the Self. You can define the self any way you want to – capital S or small, Goddess, God, core of creativity, cosmic stuff, watcher in the field, observing I, your navel gazing core. It doesn’t matter whether your mystical or material, so long as you journey within.
Yoga is to still the patterning of consciousness. So these guys, went up to caves, sat cross-legged for hours if not days, did not eat, and tried to meditate – or travel inward – mapping as they travelled inside their heads. They had visions – who wouldn’t? They had dreams – you bet. The Yoga Sutras are a map of their adventures – not a map in the traditional way we think of but a series of short sayings that delineated the way complete with noted obstacles, traps, dead ends, and helpful hints. You just have to figure out what it means today as opposed to what it meant 3000 years ago. Oh yeah, and interpret the verse.
Yoga is to still the patterning of consciousness. How does this relate to writing? I’m stretching here. I know. But that’s how I grow. When I find stillness, I write best. I can tap into my creative self and write. I can’t write when my mind is racing in different directions; when I’m worrying about deadlines; when my anxiety is high; when there are distractions – any distractions – from Facebook to Twitter, to my dog asking to go out, to my email, to my physical practice, to my son asking me to help him with his homework, to my wife asking me to take out the garbage – in other words just about any and all of life. How do I deal with these things and sit down and start to write? Every writer has their own technique. Some write in the morning before everyone else awakens. Some go to coffee shops and plug in ear phones to shut out the rest of the world. Some stare at their computer screen or out a window at birds nesting. I think in all these ways we do a similar thing.
We focus.
We withdraw from the world.
We go within.
And we write.
I still the patterning of my consciousness and look within. I follow the map. I search for a well of creativity, find a well – sometimes just a patch of wet earth, sometimes a bucket full and I dive into it.
It has been called “flow” in more modern times. It is a moment in time when you exist as one with what you’re doing. Sometimes it lasts moments and I go back and forth between flow and distraction. I hate that. It’s frustrating and hard to work that way. I don’t get much done. But if I keep at it I get something done. Those are the days the word count increases at a snail’s pace.
Other times I disappear inside and come out half an hour later (my normal morning writing time) and three pages have been written.
The more often we do this as writers – the more often we practice – make writing a practice (something we do every day) – the more we get done. The easier it becomes to follow the map inward. And here’s the thing. Even if the path shifts sometimes, new obstacles arise, old ones disappear or reappear in different forms – the yoga sutra has them all mapped out for us.
At least I think it does.
Yoga is to still the patterning of consciousness.
Got Teen Fiction?
Coming soon at Gotteenfiction, a new site I’ll be part of…
Two week count down for the online opening…
In the mean time I’m back to my book and the click-clack of keys.
Four Letter Words and Vicodin Cocktails
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I just finished my first book of 2012. Last Words by George Carlin is in the can.
It was an incredible sortabiography (his own word), telling his memoir through the story of his creative life as a comic. The second half of the book is a tough read. Carlin had a bad cocaine, alcohol, vicodin habit and only really got sober the last five or so years of his life. What especially fascinates me is his writing about his creative process. He wrote things down to capture them and hone them over and over again until they were perfect. He lived most of his life on the road performing and working, writing and capturing, honing and perfecting.
And he came up with some good shit. He was also highly political but only evolved into that over time. And he was one angry, angry man. His rage fueled many of his pieces and large parts of his performances. It provided focus for his fascinations. It provided incredible articulation. I think he had tremendous insight into the human condition and into how storytellers in particular, manipulate their audiences to follow them down into other realities.
Carlin also specialized in the use and etiology of curses. I learned about curses from Carlin. I knew about them before but he demystified them for me. He introduced them to me as full-bodied words and made me laugh at the ridiculous censorship we place on them. He increased my vocabulary ten-fold even if it was mostly in my mind.
I use the word fuck in my book, Open Wounds. I haven’t counted how many times.
When people ask me if the book is okay for their teen I always tell them it’s a 13 and up read or a 15 and up read because of the language and the violence. Most people don’t mind but some do. I think the word fuck is used sparingly in my book, not because I thought it would get me in trouble if I used it too much, but because it was only needed when it was needed by the characters who used it. I remember watching the movie Platoon the second time – with my grandfather – and squirming in my seat at the number of times the word fuck or some derivation of it (fucker, fucked-up, fucking, motherfucker, fuck-wad, etc…) was used. Almost every other word that came out of every character’s mouth included some version of fuck. The first time I saw the film I didn’t notice the language at all. The second time, with my grandfather beside me, I couldn’t hear anything but it.
I also remember reading a book last year by Cynthia Kadohata called Cracker: The Best Dog in Vietnam that, although I enjoyed, found it strange to read a whole novel about soldiers in Vietnam and not read one curse. I wonder if she consciously chose not to use the word fuck. I remember asking myself how not one soldier in her reality could get through a conversation without saying fuck at least once. It felt like a spice was missing from the narrative – some dark mole sauce.
I had one person, a friend, tell me his daughter, who was a teen, put my book down because she found the word fuck in it. Another, an adult, told me she finished it but was really shocked that the book contained such language.
What would George Carlin say to all this? Well, his now famous list of the seven words you can’t say on television no longer has any relevance. Because any and all of them can be and have been said on cable and HBO for over a decade. He stopped doing the bit after his own first HBO special.
One in which he used material that he had captured on paper, honed through practice and rewriting over and over again, and finally… perfected.
Sword Master Bob Anderson
Bob Anderson died yesterday at the age of 89 and with his passing another legend of behind the scenes hollywood sword masters passes with him. He worked with Errol Flynn in Masters of Ballantrae, Antonio Banderas in his Zorro films, Johnny Dep and Orlando Bloom in The Pirates of the Caribbean, all three Lord of the Rings films, and the first three Star Wars films with George Lucas. He choreographed the fights as sword fights before they became, in the later Star Wars films, fights of acrobatic fancy with a little swordplay mixed in-between. Anderson was the real deal, fencing in the Olympics three times, coaching the national team, and from all the gossip you could gather, was a perfectionist that actors loved to work with, a gentleman, and an overall good man who simply fell in love with the sword as a kid. His style of choreography and his wisdom from working in the business so many years will be missed.Rambo, The Terminator, and the Hyper-masculinized Male.
Here’s three words I never thought I’d hear when someone talked about my book, Open Wounds: hyper-masculine, Rambo, and Terminator. I did an interview with Dr. Beth Erickson that will be airing today Monday, January 2nd. This was a difficult interview for me. Dr. Beth had some very specific ideas about how my book played out and on how it represents the role of fatherhood. I don’t agree with all the things that she said but I liked that her ideas were provocative and made me think about my work in new and interesting ways. People bring the most amazing things to work they read. Dr. Beth’s clinical background gave her an angle I’ve not experienced before and it made me uncomfortable. If anything, that’s a good enough reason to listen to the interview – my discomfort as entertainment.
Cid Rambo.
The Terminator Cid.
The hyper-masculinized man.
Here’s the link for the interview:
Relationships 101 Body Traders and Boys Coming of Age – With Dr. Beth
First Words, Last Words
I ended 2011 and began 2012 reading the sortabiography of George Carlin, Last Words, in my opinion one of the most ingenious wordsmiths ever. I admired his love of words, his use of them for comedic and political purposes and his ability to rant and curse like no one else. I knew this man only through his live appearances, his albums, and his books. His, as he calls it, sortabiography, is brilliant, funny, and filled with his gift of words.
If you’ve been reading my blog in 2011 you know how much I like and how important I think first sentences of a book are. Here’s the first sentence of Last Words.
Sliding headfirst down a vagina with no clothes on and landing in the freshly shaven crotch of a screaming woman did not seem to be part of God’s plan for me.
From this place we can all only go forward.
Don’t forget to Breathe
New Year’s Eve.
Inhale the year that is passing.
New Year’s Day.
Exhale and create space for the new year to enter.
Inhale.
Exhale.
Just keep doing… that.
Patanjali and the Yoga of Writing
Patanjali wrote the Yoga Sutras some 3,000 years ago. Of course he wasn’t really the writer in the sense that he came up with them. He took what had been an oral tradition of verse, like the Vedas, India’s sacred texts, and put them down on paper. He codified the words so they could be remembered, forgotten, read and remembered again.
I’m using the Yoga Sutras in my yoga classes this month as a way to provide intention to the sequences and rhythms of the class. So much of yoga is about intention and focus. Without them it is just a physical exercise class. With them it teaches the great inward journey through the mind and down towards the soul of great cosmic “stuff”. Seriously. I’m not kidding. Every class opens the great doors of the mind and offers training for the journey in. Each reading of the Sutras I find new paths to follow and this text fascinates me.
I was thinking about the Sutras and writing and where I’m at now with my new work. The first sutra from the first book on Concentration, is as follows:
Sutra I:
Atha yoganushasanam.
NOW begins the teaching of yoga.
I know. I know. What is all this talk about yoga and what does it have to do with writing?
For me everything.
I don’t know where true writing comes from. I know it comes out from inside of me. Others writer have told me the same thing. There are times when they look at what they have written and either don’t remember writing it or can’t figure out where it came from.
I don’t believe it comes from a physical place. Creativity is something intangible. I believe it is innate to human beings – just look at any child (before school gets a hold of them and forces them to color within the lines), yet it cannot be touched or held, or examined under a microscope. It’s effects can be – a great novel or a painting or a beautiful song can be read, seen, or heard.
Yoga is about the yoking or bringing together of the individual and the cosmic. It is the journey inward to still the fluctuations of the mind, to rest in the self.
Writing brings me to such a place. It is an inward journey to the creative spark. It is a place that is hard to find as an adult, totally accessible as a child, and each time found just a little easier to return to the next time.
The first sutra says NOW begins the teaching of yoga. It has been, to me, a call to arms – only in this case no swords are necessary. The tools are the physical implements of writing (pencil, pen, paper, computer screen and keyboard), stillness, and a well-trained mind. Writing is all about training the mind to make this inward journey. It’s the same path the yogi takes.
NOW begins the teaching of yoga. Not after the dog has been taken out. Not after Facebook has been read. Not after tweets have been tweeted. Not after blog posts have posted.
And here’s the cool thing. You can learn about yoga and the inward journey from classes but if you really want to learn you have to make the inward journey yourself. Again and again and again. To get the most out of your practice you need to do it every day, even if it’s only for a short time. You journey by yourself and you learn from your experience. That’s why it’s called a yoga practice. No one said the path to even momentary enlightenment would be easy.
Now it’s time for writing practice.
NOW.
Present, Past, and Future Tense
The week between christmas and new years day is a strange and timeless week.It sits between the past year and the coming year. It sits in the present more than any other time, for me. In yoga class I say, try not to think about what happened before class or what will happen after. Just be present for the sensations in your body, the sound and rhythm of your breath, and awareness of your thoughts. Make room for the inward journey of your practice.
This week, after the insanity of christmas is over, these things – the ability to be more present in particular – just seem to be more… accessible. There is room inside of me.
It hasn’t always been this way. In many past years I couldn’t wait until January 1 and the beginning of a new year. I’d been focused on the end of the year and endings. And endings can be painful to be present with for any period of time.
This year, I’m more… present, more present tense.
I’m off so we’re all home, hibernating. For us hibernating is reading a lot, playing games (both electronic and non-electronic), going to the movies, taking out the dogs, and eating. I’ve added in writing in the morning and practicing yoga. I feel more whole than I have in a while. The writing is doing that for me. Other things too, but that is a big part.
I know. It sounds exciting. I wish I had two weeks like this.
But I only have one, for now.
Then it’s back to my day job.
It’s cold outside and warm inside.
Here’s three words from this morning’s work.
Besotted. Mummies. Aye.
Gelatinous Cubes and Hobbled Goblins
It’s two days before Christmas. I’ve done little shopping for some and finished for others. I’ll be scampering around NYC today finding last-minute gifts for my son. He’s been introduced to Dungeons and Dragons and he’s told me my gift for him (in addition to Amulet #4, Pokemon Black and White Cards, a Techdeck pack, and miniature radio controlled fighting tanks) can be a fully realized dungeon for him to adventure in so he can play. I’m up for it. I bought a small notebook with graph paper inside and a fine point pen – you have to have the right pen for these kinds of things. I’ll have to dust off my dice and look at the rules again. I think I’m missing page 36 from book one. It could be important but I can probably make up the rules as I go along.
Anyway.
A literary Christmas gift has been given to me by Kitty Bullard from Great Minds think Aloud Literary Community. she’s written a wonderful review of Open wounds and recommended it to her community. When a review starts with: “I feel “Open Wounds” is one of the greatest adventure books I’ve ever read,” I feel as if I’ve done all right. Thank you Kitty.
Check out her review at: Great Minds Think Aloud Literary Community.
Webley Revolvers and Rann Kutch
I’ve started the writing phase of my new book.
I’m six days in. I started writing snippets before this so I had a thousand words or so written during my planning phase. And in some ways I’m still planning. But I’ve put down the research and started in.
Here are three words I wrote today from different parts of my text:
Mumbai
Salt
Blood
My writing process is long. I’m writing early in the morning before my family wakes up (and before the dogs grab their leashes in their mouths and drag me to the front door.) – before the sun rises. I’m writing half an hour to 45 minutes at a shot. This is good for me as once my day starts at 6:30 it doesn’t stop until the evening when I’m too worn out to put fingers to key board.
I have a 2011 smile on my face.
